Saturday, September 29, 2007

At least the iPhone paperweight-ification is optional; owners of hacked iPhones can stay with an outdated release of the system software...

Some hackers had characterized Apple's warning as "a scare tactic." Despite Apple's history of playing cat-and-mouse games with hackers in the past, company officials insisted they were "not proactively" trying to make hacked iPhones useless.

It was unclear how many iPhone owners had unlocked their phones, but the programs — including several that can be downloaded for free — appeared to be particularly popular with European consumers. Apple isn't selling the iPhone in Europe until November, so the unlocking software allowed Europeans who bought iPhones in the United States to use the $399 devices.